Sarah Morgan Summer Collection

‘Can I join you?’ He spoke in that deep voice that always turned her knees to liquid and made her think of sex and seduction.

‘Of course. Hi, Logan.’ She struggled to keep her voice casual and quickly moved her hands to her lap so that he couldn’t see them shaking.

Her reaction was pathetic, she told herself. About as pathetic as hanging onto an ancient, dog-eared photograph.

Kyla scrunched up the saturated napkins and stood up to throw them in the bin, casting a long, meaningful look in Evanna’s direction.

‘Well, I’m certainly glad to see you home, Evanna.’ Logan sat back as Meg placed the toast and coffee in front of him. ‘I’ve missed you, desperately. Every moment that you were away seemed like an hour.’

Evanna’s hands clenched in her lap and she felt an involuntary dart of pleasure at his words. He’d missed her? ‘R-really? You missed me?’

‘Yes, really. How can you doubt it?’ He spread butter on his toast with those long, lean fingers that she knew were so skilled with patients. ‘It’s the summer. Glenmore Island is heaving with tourists and every surgery is packed. Not the best time for one of my precious nurses to go swanning off to the mainland for a month, even if it was part of her professional development.’ He smiled the smile that had every woman on the island reeling. ‘Of course I missed you. Did you think I wouldn’t?’

Professional development.

He’d missed her at work. Evanna gritted her teeth and looked away from that charismatic smile. It was always about work. She was his practice nurse and nothing more.

She swallowed down the disappointment, reminding herself that she’d always known that. Hadn’t she just spent an entire month dissecting their relationship in minute detail? Hadn’t she been brutally honest with herself about the way he saw her? The answer was yes to both questions, so why did hearing him confirm her analysis hurt so much? If anything, she should take it as confirmation that she was doing the right thing. And no matter how hard it turned out to be—and she knew it was going to be incredibly hard—she was going to move on.

Kyla sat down again. ‘Evanna had a good time on her refresher course.’ Her tone was cool and pointed, and Logan glanced up from buttering his toast.

‘Good.’ He bit into the toast and lifted a hand in greeting to one of the locals who was strolling along the quay. ‘It’s busy out there today. Day-trippers as well as the usual tourists. The lifeguards are going to be busy on the beach. Let’s hope it’s a quiet one. There’s a wind blowing so I wouldn’t be surprised if the lifeboat sees some business today.’

Kyla’s fingers drummed on the table. ‘She met lots of people.’ She emphasised each word carefully, as if English wasn’t his first language.

Logan dragged his eyes from the window, obviously alerted by something in his sister’s tone. ‘Who did?’

‘Evanna. On her course on the mainland, she met lots of people.‘

Evanna blushed. ‘Kyla.’

But Kyla was still looking at her brother, a dangerous light in blue eyes that were exactly like his. ‘She’s been away for a month, remember?’

‘You’re moody today. Of course I remember.’ Logan buttered the second piece of toast. ‘Why wouldn’t I? We’ve all been covering her clinics because the agency nurse they sent was hopeless. As I said, it’s good to have you back, Evanna.’

Kyla gritted her teeth. ‘She went out a lot. Met a lovely registrar. Really nice guy. Good-looking. They got on brilliantly.’

‘That’s good to hear.’ Logan finished his toast, licked his fingers and rose to his feet, his eyes on the street. ‘There’s Doug McDonald. Excuse me. I’ve been trying to catch up with him all week. Since he had the heart attack he’s afraid to push himself and I think he needs to do more. Perhaps he could go to your exercise class, Evanna? People always seem to like doing that. I suppose they have confidence because the instructor is a nurse. See you in surgery this afternoon. Janet’s booked you a full clinic.’ He patted her arm and walked towards the door, pausing by a table to exchange a few words with the couple that ran a small guesthouse near one of the island’s best beaches.

‘You see?’ Evanna’s voice was soft and she blinked several times to clear her vision. ‘I’m just a piece of medical equipment. His practice nurse. He feels the same way about me as he does about the ECG machine. We’re both useful tools that help his life run smoothly. If he could, he’d plug me into the electricity supply to make me function more efficiently.’

Kyla was simmering with frustration. ‘I’m starting to think my brother is thick.’

‘He isn’t thick. He’s very clever, you know that. He just isn’t interested and that’s fine.’

‘It isn’t fine. How can you say that it’s fine?’

Because it had to be. What choice did she have? ‘You can’t make someone love you, Kyla,’ Evanna muttered, reaching down to pick up her bag. Suddenly she just wanted to go home. Back to the peace and tranquillity of her little cottage. She needed to get her thoughts back together before she started work. Needed to rediscover some of the strength and resolve she’d found during her time on the mainland.

She dropped some money on the table for her coffee just as the door opened and Fraser stood there, his hat askew and his face scarlet. ‘Dr MacNeil!’ He was breathless from running. ‘I saw—You have to come—now … He snatched in another tortured breath and Logan turned swiftly, concern in his eyes.

‘Fraser? What did you see?’ He strode over to the boy and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You must have run like the wind to be this out of breath. It’s all right. Calm down. Now, what’s happened?’

Fraser waved a hand towards the beach beyond the harbour. ‘Drowning.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Kid in a rubber dinghy thing. Fell in.’

Without wasting time on questions, Logan left the café at a run with Fraser at his heels.

Evanna and Kyla followed, dodging the throngs of tourists ambling along the quay before sprinting down the steps onto the sand.

‘He’s gone!’ A young woman holding a tiny baby was running up and down the sand at the edge of the waves, frantically scanning the water. ‘He was in the boat and now he’s gone!’

‘I saw him.’ Fraser backed away from the mother and moved closer to Logan, instinctively seeking protection from the woman’s mounting hysteria and the baby’s howling. ‘We were up on the cliffs. He leant out of the boat with this bucket thing and a wave caught the boat and he fell. Straight down.’

The woman’s wails turned to screams and Logan took Fraser to one side, his tone urgent.

‘Where, exactly?’ He was ripping off his shirt as he spoke. ‘And how long ago did he fall?’

Fraser shrugged. ‘About two minutes? We started running down as soon as it happened. The wind’s blowing off shore so I suppose it was probably there.’ Fraser pointed. ‘You want me to go in and look?’

‘No. I want you to stay right here.’ Logan thrust his clothes into Fraser’s hands and handed him a mobile phone. ‘Call the coastguard on that and then go to my car and get my bag. Here are the keys. Then stay here with Evanna and do everything she says. Everything.’

‘OK.’ Fraser nodded importantly and punched the number into the phone. ‘I’ll give them the details. Be careful, Dr MacNeil.’

Logan looked at Evanna, his ice-blue eyes sharp and alert. ‘Beach duty.’

She nodded, reading his mind. He wanted her to coordinate efforts on the beach. He didn’t want any of the tourists plunging into the waves on a rescue mission, because they were likely to get into trouble. He didn’t want little Fraser going in. He wanted her to give support to the mother and then help the rescue services.

Logan lifted the buoyancy aid that he’d grabbed from the top of the beach and ran with a long-limbed, athletic stride towards the sea. At any other time she would have admired the strength and power of his body but the crisis was unfolding in front of her. The mother was screaming now, a thin, high-pitched panicky noise that cut through the air like a knife. A crowd had gathered in the way that humans always gathered when they scented disaster.

Kyla moved them back. ‘Come on, now. Nothing to see.’ Her tone was clipped. Efficient. ‘Move right back, please. Go to the far end of the beach. Right back. That’s right. We’re going to need to land a helicopter here.’

Fraser was speaking to the coastguard on the phone and Evanna turned to the mother and slid an arm round her shoulders.

‘You poor thing. You must be frantic with worry but try and calm down so that we can ask you some questions,’ she said gently. ‘How old is he?’

‘Six.’ The mother gave a gulp and jiggled the baby to try and soothe it. ‘He’s just six. Jason. He’s so little.’

‘And he was in some sort of boat?’

‘I only turned my back for a minute. I was changing the baby.’ She sucked air in and out of her lungs, her eyes wild. ‘It was just a minute.’

And a minute was more than long enough when water wasinvolved, Evanna thought as she squinted towards the sea. ‘What boat?’ She couldn’t see a boat. Only a small toy blow-up boat of the sort that people used in swimming pools.

‘There! That’s it.’ The mother pointed to the toy. ‘We bought it in the beach shop on the quay.’

‘He was in that?’ Evanna couldn’t quite believe that anyone would have considered such a flimsy toy sufficient protection for a child in open water and her shock must have sounded in her voice because the woman stiffened defensively.

‘He was just playing near the shore. I thought he was fine. It was just for a minute.’ The woman was sobbing again, clutching at Evanna who supported her and glanced towards Fraser with a question in her eyes.